You never know who will turn up at Palmer Sport

Good day Everyone!

Today was an interesting day at PalmerSport! The program started as normal, nothing special to report, and I was assigned to instruct on the Caterham circuit. For me the Caterham circuit is a highly enjoyable, but very involved position. If you have never seen/driver a Caterham I will tell you they are hugely fun to drive. The car is built after a Lotus 7 with the engine way in the front and the driver/passenger being the only thing to put any weight on the rear tyres. Because of this weight balance the cars are constantly in a state of 'slideways' and it is very easy to control a four wheel drift with the cars. SUPER!

This being said, when many of our guests get behind the wheel it is a job and a half to keep them on the track! Sometimes their ability to fire the cars off the track exceeds our instructors talent to keeping them on the track! It is a classic Caterham move for the rear end of the cars to overtake the front end in a plume of smoke through the high speed corners.

Between the chaos on the Caterhman circuit I found myself out of the car in between sessions further explaining to one of my drivers how not to launch the car off the course. Occasionally my boss will drive by in his bright yellow Seat (a spanish manufactured sedan, not too different in appearance to a honda civic). He will often drive around on inspections of the different events to make sure everything is running smoothly and everyone is on task. On this particular day I had seen him by twice already which is normal, but when he came by the third time I was a bit suprised to see him so many times in the morning.

As the Seat drove by I looked up and noticed someone was riding in the passenger seat. I wasn't sure at first who it was but they looked familiar. On second look as the car came by I realized Honda/Super Aguri Formula 1 driver Takuma Sato was in the passenger seat looking out on our organized chaos.

Takuma Sato is a national hero in Japan as he is one of the few Japanese drivers to rise to the level of Formula 1 in motorsport. It is also suggested that the Super Aguri F1 team was created and supported by Honda simply to keep him in an F1 racing seat when he was sacked from the Honda works team.

Although Sato has a flair for running into the back of people on starts and firing his Honda powered machine off the circuit last year he became a hero to me. During the 2007 season he was driving for Super Aguri F1 a small operation which was running the Honda 2006 cars (which happened to be very fast). However, because the operation was so small and new no one expected them to do anything aside from field a car for Sato to keep riots from breaking out in Japan. However in Canada he put the follow pass on Championship leader Fernando Alonso for 6th place. It was a mega pass and I was hugely impressed that the Japanese driver could pass a McLaren!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwaicYzTlOE&NR=1

Now since he isn't driving in F1 and I saw him riding around at PalmerSport job security immeditely came to mind. However when I spoke with my boss later I found out that he is just going to be doing a special instructing session for some of his investors later in the year.

On a side note after work I went and played Football (known as Soccer in America) and scored 4 goals in the game! My colleagues were a bit shocked because it was my first time to play football, perhaps the 12 yeas of soccer I played might have benefited me a bit!

Hope you are all doing well, the British F1 grand prix is coming up this weekend and I am looking forward to bringing you all the buzz from the pit lane!

Cheers

Michael